Emmanuel Macron Is Inaugurated as France’s President.

By Alissa J. Rubin, The New York Times, May 14, 2017.

PARIS — Against the regal backdrop of a grand reception room in France’s presidential palace, Emmanuel Macron, 39, was officially installed as the youngest president in modern French history.

In his short speech to mark the occasion, he encouraged the French to embrace the future, to hold him to a high standard and to join him in the hard work ahead.

“I reassure you that not for a single second did I think that everything changed as if by magic on May 7,” Mr. Macron said of the day he was elected. “This will be slow work, demanding, but indispensable. It will be up to me to convince the French that our country, which seems threatened by the sometimes contrary winds of the world, carries in its heart all the resources to be a nation of the first rank”.

The new president is wasting no time. On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Macron, as the new commander in chief, visited wounded soldiers at a military hospital outside Paris. On Monday, he is expected to travel to Berlin to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, France’s most important ally in Europe, and he will announce his pick for prime minister. By midweek, the rest of his government should be named.

Before week’s end, he is scheduled to visit French soldiers who are serving in places such as Mali and Central African Republic.

Mr. Macron said his presidency would be guided by two concerns: finding ways to help the French “have confidence in themselves again” and making France prosperous and strong.

France faces persistent high unemployment, especially among its youth — in some places unemployment tops 40 percent — a need for more flexibility in the workplace to encourage employers to create more jobs and concerns about terrorism and immigration, which have led to deep divisions between France’s Muslim minority and non-Muslims.

The European Union, of which France and Germany are economically the most powerful countries, faces the most severe criticism since its founding, including by France, with calls for deep reforms. Those resentments are running so deep as populism rises across Europe that leaders throughout the Union are considering far-reaching changes.

The United Kingdom voted in 2016 to leave the bloc, and Mr. Macron will be deeply involved with Ms. Merkel in negotiating its exit.

According to protocol, Mr. Macron was greeted on his arrival at the Élysée Palace by his departing predecessor, François Hollande, to whom he owes his first experience in politics. Mr. Macron was a counselor to Mr. Hollande when he was re-elected in 2012, and later became his economy minister.